How To Sell That Merchandise part two So far, we have just talked of earning enough money to keep the business going. Most companies also want to make profits for future expansion and to pay dividends to shareholders or bonuses to the proprietors and loyal employees. In order to create a profit, the firm will have to increase its prices by a margin - the profit margin. If your aim is a profit margin on total sales of 10%, you can either merely raise the price of everything by 10% across the board or you can selectively raise prices to make the same effect whilst having some loss-leaders - things that do not have an effective profit margin. Calculating and maintaining a positive profit margin places a further strain on management and requires constant monitoring, because the profit margin will almost certainly not be constant throughout the year. Some sales periods or quarters are obviously more lucrative than others. Christmas may bring higher sales and higher profits but at a lower profit margin. The January sales may be more about clearing the old stock than about regular sales. The summer may be the period with the highest profit margin. It really relies on your niche and your approach. A manager may strive to influence the market's regular behaviour through marketing and again, this might be heavier in some quarters than in others. Although it is generally agreed that marketing pays, it is really only good marketing that pays and some campaigns waste money. Advertising and insurance become additional overheads, although a good marketing campaign will more than pay for itself and insurance will keep you in business in case of a disaster, if the policy is a good one. Stock control and rotation are an vital part of running a store and this is usually controlled at the point of sale these days. As an item is sold, the computer lowers the inventory by one unit and warns the manager to reorder once stock reaches a predetermined minimum. This is the best and most common system in use today and it gives management a better opportunity of overseeing their realm, without massive stock checks on a weekly or monthly basis, as used to happen. It also assists to reduce theft which is also an overhead. Where there is money, there are thieves and stores are no exception. Each store loses goods or / and cash to its workforce and customers each day or every week. The better the inventory system the easier it is to control theft and fraud. One of the most recent ideas being integrated into the point of sale stock control system is radio frequency identification or RFID. You will have seen RFID tags on things in clothing stores, but nowadays they can be very small.
The RFID tag will bear a reference number, the description and the price of the device it is attached to and will automatically give this information up to an RFID reader at the point of sale. It works in a comparable fashion to a bar code, but can carry more data and does not need to get hand scanned. Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with large boxes for shipping. If you want to know more go to Where Can I Purchase Shipping Boxes?